American actress Ava Gardner was BOTD in 1922. Born in Grabtown, North Carolina, the daughter of a tobacco farmer, her family lost their money during the Great Depression and moved to Newport News, Virginia. Spotted by Hollywood talent scouts at 18, she was given a screen test, in which her lack of refinement and barely intelligible accent prompted MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer to proclaim, “She can’t act. She can’t talk. She’s terrific. Sign her.” Coached in acting, poise and elocution by the studio, Gardner made her screen debut in 1943’s We Were Dancing, appearing in small roles for the next four years. She became an overnight star when MGM loaned her to Universal Pictures for the 1946 film noir The Killers, playing a scheming seductress opposite the then-unknown Burt Lancaster. Promoted, patronisingly, as “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal”, she starred as romantic leads in the 1951 musical Show Boat; the Ernest Hemingway adaptations The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Sun Also Rises; Mogambo, co-starring Clark Gable; The Barefoot Contessa with Humphrey Bogart; and the film of Tennessee Williams‘ play The Night of the Iguana. She endured three unsuccessful and highly-publicised marriages, to actor Mickey Rooney, bandleader Artie Shaw and actor-singer Frank Sinatra, making her a tabloid fixation. She is also thought to have had an affair with Costa Rican-Mexican singer Chavela Vargas. As her career declined, she left Hollywood in 1966, settling in London where she made occasional appearances in films, including the historical drama Mayerling with James Mason, and on television. She died in 1990, aged 67. Her memoir Ava: My Story, was published posthumously. She has been portrayed multiple times onscreen, notably by Marcia Gay Harden, Deborah Kara Unger and Kate Beckinsdale.